- Introduction
- Before the Five: Grip and Motion
- 1. Katsuramuki (桂むき): Rotary Peeling
-
2. Sengiri & Senroppon (千切り
・千
六本): Two Kinds of Julienne - 3. Sogigiri (削ぎ切り): The Slanted Slice
- 4. Rangiri (乱切り): The Rolling Oblique Cut
- 5. Sasagaki (ささがき): Shaving Like a Pencil
- Which Knife for Which Cut
- How to Actually Get Better at These
- FAQ
- Start With One Cut This Week
- Quick Reference: The Five Cuts at a Glance
Introduction
Here's something I notice every time I watch a Japanese chef work: it's not the knife doing the magic. It's the cut.
You can hand someone a $1,000 blade and they'll still hack a carrot into uneven chunks. Meanwhile a good chef with a modest knife turns that same carrot into pieces that cook evenly, sit clean on the plate, and taste better — because how you cut food changes how it cooks.
I'm not a trained chef. I'll say that upfront.
But I've spent years around the people who make our knives, and I've picked up a handful of cuts that really changed how I cook at home.
So here are five. None of them need years of training. Each one is worth learning this week.
And yes, I'll point you to the knife that suits each cut, because the right tool makes these easier. But the technique comes first. Always.
Before the Five: Grip and Motion
Before the cuts, two quick things that make all five easier.
First, how you hold the knife. Pinch the blade — thumb and index finger on the steel just ahead of the handle, the other three fingers around the handle itself. It feels strange for about a day. Then it feels obvious. You get far more control over a thin Japanese blade this way than you do gripping the handle like a hammer.
Second, the motion. Japanese knives are thin and hard, so they're made to glide, not to crush. Almost every cut below is a single smooth pull or push, with the blade doing the work as it travels. If you're pressing down hard, either the edge has gone dull, or your angle is off.
And your other hand matters too. Curl your fingertips under into a loose claw, knuckles forward, and let the flat of the blade rest against your knuckles as a guide. Your fingertips never get near the edge. Do this from day one, and it becomes automatic.
That's the whole foundation. Now the five cuts.
1. Katsuramuki (桂むき): Rotary Peeling
This is the one that makes people stop and watch.
Katsuramuki (桂むき) means rotary peeling — muki is "to peel." You take a cylinder of vegetable, almost always daikon (大根), the white radish, and peel it into one long, continuous sheet as thin as paper. Done well, you can read newsprint through it.
Then that sheet gets stacked and sliced into hair-thin strands. Those strands are ken (けん) — the little nest of shredded daikon sitting under a slice of sashimi. It's not just decoration. It cleanses the palate between bites and helps keep the fish on the plate cold and fresh.
I'll be straight with you: this is the hardest cut in this article. The pros train on it for years, peeling one daikon after another until the sheet comes off evenly. Your first try will tear. So will your tenth. That's normal. Keep your practice section short, maybe 8–10 cm (3–4 in), move the blade slowly, and let your thumbs set the thickness while your other hand rotates the daikon toward the edge.
A word on the knife. The traditional tool here is a usuba (薄刃), a single-bevel vegetable knife with a thin, flat blade, which we don't carry. For a home cook, the Nakiri Knife handles this beautifully and forgives a lot more, thanks to its flat profile, which keeps even contact across the whole sheet. Once you've got your sheet, switch to a long, thin blade like the Yanagiba Sashimi Knife to slice it down into ken.
Even if you never plate sashimi at home, katsuramuki is worth practicing for one reason: nothing teaches blade control faster.
2. Sengiri & Senroppon (千切り・千六本): Two Kinds of Julienne
"Julienne" covers a lot of ground in a Japanese kitchen, and the difference between these two comes down to thickness.
Sengiri (千切り) is the fine one — threads under 1 mm, basically hair. Slice a leek this way, and you get shiraga-negi (白髪ねぎ), "white-hair leek," the soft white curls piled on top of ramen and grilled fish. Cabbage cut into sengiri is the cloud of shredded green next to a tonkatsu.
Senroppon (千六本) is the sturdier cousin, with matchsticks around 2–3 mm (about ⅛ in) thick. Thick enough to hold their shape and keep a little crunch, which is what you want in a stir-fry, a salad, or a simmered dish where thread-thin pieces would just collapse.
The method is the same for both. Slice your vegetables into thin, flat planks first, stack a few of those planks like fallen dominoes, then cut down across the stack. Your spacing on that second cut is the whole game: tight spacing gives you sengiri, slightly wider gives you senroppon.
Two things make this easier. Keep your stack short so it doesn't slide, and keep the blade tall. This is where a Nakiri shines — the flat, rectangular blade hits the board along its whole edge, so every strand gets cut clean instead of half-sawn. It's built for exactly this kind of repetitive vegetable work.
3. Sogigiri (削ぎ切り): The Slanted Slice
This one looks like a small magic trick once it clicks.
Sogigiri (削ぎ切り) means "shaving cut." You lay the knife down at a low, flat angle against the ingredient and draw it back toward you — from the heel of the blade through to the tip — shaving off a wide, thin slice in one pull. Because the blade travels at an angle, each slice has far more surface than a straight cut would give you.
That extra surface is the whole point. More surface means sauce clings better, marinade soaks in faster, and thin pieces of protein cook in seconds. It's the cut behind a lot of chicken for hot pot, mushrooms for a stir-fry, and the thin slices of white fish and squid you see in sashimi.
The motion matters more than force. One smooth pull, blade almost lying flat, letting the edge slice as it goes. If you're pressing down, lower your angle and let the blade's length carry the cut.
For everyday sogigiri on chicken or mushrooms, a Santoku Knife has enough blade and a gentle enough curve to pull the whole slice in one motion. For fish — sashimi-grade fillets where each slice should come off clean and glossy — this is the Yanagiba at its best. Its long single-bevel blade is made to slice protein in a single backward draw, no sawing.
4. Rangiri (乱切り): The Rolling Oblique Cut
If you only learn one cut from this list for everyday cooking, make it this one.
Rangiri (乱切り) translates roughly as "random cut," which undersells how controlled it actually is. You cut a vegetable on a diagonal, give it a quarter-turn toward you, then cut again at the same angle. Turn, cut, turn, cut. The pieces come out with irregular, faceted shapes but roughly the same size—and that sameness is what matters.
Here's why it's so useful. The same size means everything cooks at the same rate, so nothing turns to mush while something else is still raw. And all those angled faces expose more surface area, so the pieces drink up the simmering broth fast. This is the standard cut for carrots, daikon, lotus root, and burdock in nimono (煮物), Japan's everyday simmered dishes.
The rhythm is the whole skill, and it comes quicker than you'd think. Keep the knife angle steady and let your other hand do the turning, a quarter-roll each time. You'll feel it lock into a rhythm after a carrot or two.
This is sturdy, everyday work, so reach for an everyday blade. A Gyuto Knife has the length and weight to roll through a thick carrot or a length of daikon without stalling. A Santoku works just as well if you prefer something shorter and lighter in the hand.
Make a pot of simmered vegetables once with rangiri pieces and once with plain chunks. The even cooking is obvious in the first bite.
5. Sasagaki (ささがき): Shaving Like a Pencil
The name comes from sasa (笹), bamboo grass, because the little shavings look like slender bamboo leaves.
Sasagaki (ささがき) is the cut for burdock root — gobo (ごぼう) — that long, woody root that turns up in kinpira and the broth of a good kenchin-jiru. You hold the gobo in one hand and shave thin flakes off the end with the knife, rotating the root as you go, exactly like sharpening a pencil with a blade.
Why shave instead of slice? Gobo is tough and fibrous. Shaving it into thin flakes breaks those fibers, softens it when cooked, and releases an earthy, almost nutty aroma that makes gobo worth eating in the first place. One quick note: gobo browns fast once cut, so drop the shavings into a bowl of water as you work.
A small trick that helps — score a shallow cross into the cut end of the root before you start, like quartering it without cutting through. The flakes come off finer and more even.
This is delicate, close-in work, so a smaller blade gives you more control than a big chef's knife. A Petty Knife is sized for exactly this, nimble enough to shave flake after flake without your hand crowding the root.
It feels fiddly for the first minute. Then your hands find the rhythm, and a whole root disappears into a pile of shavings faster than you'd believe.
Which Knife for Which Cut
None of these cuts needs a drawer full of knives. Most of them come down to two or three blades doing what they were shaped to do.
Here's the quick map of the cut-to-knife. If you want the wider world of cuts beyond these five — wedges, half-moons, dicing styles — that's all in our companion piece, Cut Styles using Japanese Knives.
| Technique | Best for | Knife that suits it |
|---|---|---|
| Katsuramuki (桂むき) | Paper-thin daikon sheets, sashimi ken | Nakiri to peel, Yanagiba to slice into strands |
| Sengiri & Senroppon (千切り・千六本) | Fine threads and matchsticks | Nakiri |
| Sogigiri (削ぎ切り) | Angled slices of chicken, mushrooms, fish | Santoku; Yanagiba for fish |
| Rangiri (乱切り) | Even chunks for simmered dishes | Gyuto or Santoku |
| Sasagaki (ささがき) | Shaved burdock (gobo) | Petty |
If you're starting from nothing, a Gyuto or Santoku plus a Nakiri covers four of the five. Add a Yanagiba when you start working with fish.
How to Actually Get Better at These
None of this comes from reading. It comes from repetition, and less than you'd think.
Pick one cut and one vegetable, and stay there. A bag of carrots and twenty minutes will teach you more about rangiri than any video.
Keep your sessions short. Your hands learn the rhythm faster when you're fresh, and tired hands are how cuts go wrong.
Keep the knife sharp. Almost every "I can't do this" moment is really a dull edge crushing instead of slicing.
And watch your other hand, not the blade. Fingertips curled under, knuckles guiding. Get that automatic, and everything else gets safer and faster at the same time.
Which cut are you going to try first? My honest suggestion is rangiri tonight and katsuramuki on a lazy weekend, when tearing a few daikon sheets won't bother you.
FAQ
Do I need single-bevel Japanese knives to do these cuts?
The traditional tools for the showiest of these are single-bevel knives — an usuba for katsuramuki, a yanagiba for sashimi slices — ground on one side only for a very fine edge. None of the five actually require one. A sharp double-bevel knife like a nakiri, gyuto, or santoku handles all five, and double-bevel blades are far more forgiving while you learn. Single-bevel knives also ask more of you at the sharpening stone, since the angle has to stay consistent across one face. For a home cook, how sharp the edge is matters more than whether it's ground on one side or two.
How sharp does my knife actually need to be for this?
Sharp enough that the blade does the work on its own. A thin, keen edge glides through with a single pull, while a dull one crushes and tears — which is exactly what wrecks a paper-thin katsuramuki sheet or a clean sogigiri slice. A rough test: a properly sharp knife will slide through tomato skin under its own weight, with no pressing. Most kitchen knives drift out of that range within a few weeks of regular use, so a quick pass on a whetstone before a fine-cutting session changes everything. How often you sharpen depends on the steel and how hard the knife gets used.
Which technique is easiest to start with, and which takes the most practice?
Rangiri is the most forgiving — the pieces are supposed to look irregular, so early mistakes vanish into the dish. Sengiri and senroppon come next, where the only real skill is even spacing. Sogigiri and sasagaki sit in the middle, both more about angle and rhythm than precision. Katsuramuki is the hard one, and it stays hard; professional cooks practice it for years to peel a sheet that comes off even and unbroken. A sensible order is rangiri first, katsuramuki last.
Are these cuts only useful for Japanese cooking?
Not at all. The names are Japanese, but the logic is just food physics. Sengiri is the same idea as a French julienne, and rangiri is a rolling oblique cut that turns up across Chinese and Southeast Asian kitchens too. Once you can produce even, angled pieces, they work in a sheet pan of roasted vegetables or a fast stir-fry as well as they do in nimono. The technique travels; only the vocabulary is local.
Is it safe to cut toward my hand in katsuramuki and sasagaki?
Both do move the blade in the general direction of the hand holding the vegetable, which sounds alarming and deserves a straight answer. The safeguard is that the motion stays small and controlled — short blade travel, the thumb braced as a stop, the edge moving against the body of the vegetable rather than swinging freely. Keep the pieces short while you learn: an 8–10 cm (3–4 in) section of daikon, a hand-length of gobo, so nothing wobbles. If a cut ever feels like it needs force or a big swing, stop and reset. That's the moment fingers get caught, not the slow, careful pass.
Start With One Cut This Week
You don't need to master all five. Pick the one that fits what you cook, and give it a week.
If you're choosing a knife to learn on, browse the full lineup of handmade Japanese knives — each one is forged and sharpened by hand in Japan using techniques carried over from samurai sword-making. And if it's your first, join the free Japanese Knife Club for 10% off your first order plus a knife-care guide to keep that edge sharp.
Questions about which knife suits the cuts you make most? Reach the team any time through the contact page.
Quick Reference: The Five Cuts at a Glance
| Cut | The motion | Practice on | Knife |
|---|---|---|---|
| Katsuramuki (桂むき) | Peel into one continuous paper-thin sheet | Daikon, 8–10 cm (3–4 in) section | Nakiri → Yanagiba |
| Sengiri (千切り) | Stack thin planks, slice into hair-fine threads | Carrot | Nakiri |
| Senroppon (千六本) | Same, cut to 2–3 mm matchsticks | Carrot | Nakiri |
| Sogigiri (削ぎ切り) | Low angle, one backward pull | Chicken breast laid flat | Santoku / Yanagiba |
| Rangiri (乱切り) | Diagonal cut, quarter-turn, repeat | Carrot or daikon | Gyuto / Santoku |
| Sasagaki (ささがき) | Rotate and shave like a pencil | Burdock (gobo) | Petty |
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About the author
Kei Nishida
Author, CEO Dream of Japan
Certifications: PMP, BS in Computer Science
Education: Western Washington University
